


The Reason I'm Making These Tracks in the Snow

by Parker_Haven_Wuornos



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: But not with the person you have feelings for, F/F, Getting Together, Jennifer is Immune, Melancholy fluff, Snowed In, Sort Of, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27901732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parker_Haven_Wuornos/pseuds/Parker_Haven_Wuornos
Summary: “Do you normally get storms like this so early?” Jennifer asks.“No,” Jordan admits. They get snowstorms—it’s Haven; they get all kinds of storms—but typically the worst they get this time of year is mild flurries and rarely anything that sticks.“It’s up to my knees,” Jennifer says.“That’s not very high,” Jordan points out without thinking.Jennifer glares. “Hey! You know—”Jordan is already laughing—real laughter, the kind that makes her chest ache—but Jen is just getting warmed up.Her cheeks are flushed red and she’s stepping closer, lifting her arm to jab a confrontational finger in Jordan’s face. It shouldn’t be funny. It shouldn’t be cute.
Relationships: Duke Crocker & Jennifer Mason, Dwight Hendrickson & Jordan McKee, Jordan Mckee/Jennifer Mason
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Haven 2020 Gift Exchange





	The Reason I'm Making These Tracks in the Snow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mythoughtsaretroubled](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythoughtsaretroubled/gifts).



> A fic for the wonderful Carrie MyThoughtsAreTroubled for the Haven Gift Exchange. I used the prompt Jordan/Jennifer, Friendships, Non-lethal troubles, and talking about feelings. Thanks so much for organizing this and I hope you like it!

The coffee is stronger today, so Jennifer has to add more sugar when Jordan is dealing with another customer. It still doesn’t taste very good, but when Jordan glances over, Jennifer smiles as if it does. It’s a quiet morning—Mornings are usually quiet at the Gun and Rose—so in between taking care of other people, Jordan hovers at the counter and they talk.

Today, Jordan is only half-here, and Jennifer tries not to be jealous. There’s a guard meeting later, and Jordan is complaining about it the way Jennifer used to complain about staff meetings at the paper.

“Everyone has to talk, you know?” Jordan says, rolling her eyes. “None of these guys have anything to say, but the minute _I_ do—”

“They don’t let you talk,” Jennifer says sympathetically. “Bastards.”

Jordan smiles and Jennifer wants to curl in on herself to trap the warmth where it is.

Listening to her bitch about normal things is nice; Jennifer would stay here all day, hearing her air out all manner of grievances, both mundane and supernatural.

What’s also nice is when Jordan has to leave to deal with customers, and Jennifer can watch her without being observed.

She looks more at ease here than she does most places. Jennifer has noticed—because she watches Jordan a little more than what is probably normal—that she only ever looks totally comfortable outside. When she’s in the diner, she still carries the nervous tension she always has, but her movements are just a little freer.

Closed spaces make Jordan nervous, and as often as Jennifer has wondered whether it’s because she doesn’t like being closed in with others, or because others are closed in with her, she’s never been brave enough to ask.

Jen’s lack of bravery is something of a theme when it comes to her interactions with Jordan.

Back in Boston, before she’d started hearing the barn, before she’d gotten her diagnosis, before she’d had any reason to even think about the entire state of Maine, her friends had all thought she was bold.

She’d always been the one to go up to the cute guy or girl at the bar, the one her friends giggled over behind their hands after a few shots. And not just when she was drunk; Jen wasn’t afraid to march up to someone and tell them exactly what she thought about them, something that had made both friends and enemies when she’d worked at the Globe.

All that courage dries up when it comes to Jordan, who somehow makes Jennifer feel like the time she’d flipped backwards off a swing as a child, except the ground never rises up to meet her.

Jordan came back around to Jennifer a couple minutes later with a rueful smile. “Some people.”

“What terrible crime have they committed and how should I kill them?” Jennifer asks with a smile.

“Apparently we stock the wrong kind of hot sauce,” Jordan says with some amusement, brushing off her threat. 

Jennifer is sure Jordan doesn’t realize how much she meant it. She doesn’t think Jordan knows that Duke, Nathan, and Audrey have already been told in no uncertain terms that nothing is to happen to Jordan. Even Vince Teagues had once referenced that Jordan was becoming “a problem” and he’d been met with fifteen feet of fury in a five-foot frame.

“And what should you stock?” Jennifer asks, forcing herself to stay in the present.

Jordan shrugs. “Some fancy bullshit I’ve never heard of.”

“What a dick,” She says with finality, and Jordan smiles.

The smile catches Jennifer off guard; it’s wide and real. Jennifer has seen it before but only very rarely and it jerks the air out of her lungs every time.

“Are you busy today?” Jordan asks, picking up a rag so she can pretend to wipe down the counter for the fifth time.

“Not yet, but that could change.” Jennifer’s job at the Herald is eventful to say the least, and rarely followed convenient hours.

Jordan looks out the window. “I don’t like the look of that sky. You should stay in.”

Jen frowns at it; it just looks gray to her. “Cloudy with a chance of troubles?”

“Not sure,” She says. “Looks like snow.”

“Isn’t it a little early for snow?” She asks, looking again at the thick, low-hanging clouds.

Jordan laughs. “I don’t know how things are down south, but it’s never too early to snow here.”

Jennifer has exactly enough Bostonian pride to bristle. “I’m _not_ from ‘down south’!”

She wants to claim that she’s seen winters Jordan wouldn’t believe, but she knows she probably can’t make that argument. A minute later she realizes how much she doesn’t want to see a Maine winter combined with the troubles.

Cold she can handle, chaos, she’s gotten good at. But chaos while living in a frozen wasteland? She’d much rather not.

Jennifer shrugs. “It won’t be that bad.”

Jordan looks away, something like pain on her face. “It will.”

On instinct, Jennifer reaches for her; she just looks so sad. She stops before she’s even decided what she wanted to touch—Jordan’s face, one of her gloved hands, her shoulder—but Jordan flinches and steps back, knocking into counter behind her.

Jennifer doesn’t want to interpret the look on her face. Disgust, horror, a tension Jennifer hopes isn’t anger.

It hurts. It burns actually, pain that spears into her hand—

She’d spilled her coffee when Jordan pulled away, and that’s what burns. Not Jordan’s eyes, just the coffee.

“Sorry,” Jennifer whispers as Jordan gets a rag and wipes up the spill. She hands Jennifer a napkin for her hand, holding it out by the very corner so there’s no risk of contact.

That hurts worse than the burn.

“You should, uh, go,” Jordan says. Jennifer follows her eyes and sees that it’s starting to snow.

For a second she wonders if Jordan is talking about leaving Haven altogether. Getting away from the troubles. She’s normal now, hasn’t heard from the barn in weeks.

But Jennifer wants to stay. Despite how often she’s shunted to the sides of the action, she’s a part of all this, and she cares about her friends here. Duke and Audrey, the Teagues, even Nathan sometimes.

And Jordan.

Jennifer watches Jordan rearrange something on a shelf behind the counter, her eyes downcast, and knows that even if she wasn’t trying to find out who her birth parents were, she wouldn’t leave Haven for anything.

“Actually, I’d like another coffee please.”

* * *

There’s something comforting about snow. Jordan imagines her trouble as heat, fire that peals out of her skin and tears into whoever gets too close. She can picture herself burying her cursed hands in the snow and holding them there, past pain and freezing, until she pulls them out and they’re so cold her trouble can’t work. 

She tells herself it’s just because it’s nice not to get weird looks for wearing gloves. Fantasies about magic snow that cures troubles just don’t quite hold up to scrutiny after everything she’s been through.

But even non-magic woods are nice. There’s nothing quite like a snowy forest, the way silence presses in, even when her boots crunch on the ground, noise doesn’t echo or linger. It’s freeing; exactly what she needs after her scare with Jennifer earlier.

In that way, it’s almost lucky that she drew the short straw and has to go check up on Joe McLaren. His trouble causes people to hallucinate when they hear his voice, so the guard sequestered him in a remote cabin, far from town where even the most intrepid hikers are unlikely to discover him by accident.

Rather than endure whoever was randomly selected to go with her, she told them she’d go on her own, and called Dwight as soon as she was out of earshot.

He was good company, which mostly meant he was silent company.

“So you and Jennifer,” He says out of nowhere, and she takes the thought back with malice.

“What?” She asks, immediately on guard. It felt like a trap, like when she’d been in school and the kids had asked if she thought certain classmates were pretty, or what bands she liked. It was a simple question, but other questions, important ones, lay underneath it like snakes.

Besides, she doesn’t want to think about Jen. Thinking about Jen meant thinking about the way her eyes had shone with hurt when Jordan had flinched away from her, and thinking about the stubborn set of her shoulders when she’d asked for more coffee.

Dwight shrugged. “Duke mentioned that she talked about you.”

Despite the cold around them, Jordan’s cheeks go hot and she bites her tongue before she can ask him what Jennifer said about her, when she had mentioned her and why, and had she said nice things and why would she talk to Crocker about it and—

She gets ahold of herself and forces an ambiguous shrug. “Not sure why she would.”

That’s true. She doesn’t know why Jennifer would mention her to Crocker. She can’t even parcel out why Jennifer still spends time with him.

“You spend a lot of time together,” Dwight prods uncharacteristically.

“Not really.” Also true. Jennifer shows up at the Gun and Rose during her shifts sometimes, but it’s hardly spending time together; Jordan is working.

They continue forging their way through the snow in silence, but now there’s something expectant about Dwight, like he knows if he waits long enough, she’ll break.

He’s a little bit right. Jordan hasn’t talked to anyone about Jennifer—not that there’s anything to talk about—and part of her wants to. Part of her wants to get a bottle of wine and sit cross-legged on her bed and talk about crushes all night, like she had with her first roommate.

But Dwight is not that kind of friend, even if sometimes she wished he’d share his hair care routine with her.

The other part of her knows what kind of friends they are, and that it’s only on good days, days when she didn’t let her rage overtake her, and when he could push past his grief.

Friends isn’t even the right word. They’re just allies fighting the same war.

“Seems like you’re friends,” He says, and she wishes he’d stop pushing. They have a job to do, and he’s distracting her.

She won’t let herself point out that there’s not much to distract from as they continue to trek through the snowy woods towards the cabin.

“She just comes to the diner sometimes,” Jordan says, because for some reason he won’t let this drop.

“What does she get?”

“Coffee,” Jordan says, realizing only a moment later that it was odd that she knew that so quickly.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

She thinks he’ll go back to silence after that, but he goes on. “Do you talk when she’s there?”

Jordan shrugs. They do, but she doesn’t want him to ask what they talk about, because she wouldn’t know what to say.

Nothing really. Jennifer sits and talks to her about nothing much at all, and Jordan listens, because she’d listen to Jen read a phonebook if that was what she wanted to do.

And she _definitely_ can’t tell Dwight that.

“I think she likes you.”

He says it so conversationally, so casually that he might as well have mentioned that it was cold, that the snow was wet. He says it as if he doesn’t think it’s an earth shifting statement for Jordan.

But then, he probably doesn’t.

Without thinking, Jordan says, “What would you know about it?”

Dwight, of course, doesn’t react; she’s seen him get shot and hardly even flinch.

Still, it was hurtful, and she knows it.

She tries so hard, usually, to cause as little pain as possible. It was a vow she’d made to herself last year when an old lady on a bike had accidently knocked her over. The woman had reached to help Jordan up, and accidentally touched her bare wrist.

She had screamed. Jordan had run.

So she’s careful with her words, usually. Except that had slipped out, and she knew Dwight. She knew his wife had left him, abruptly abandoning him with Lizzie and not even coming back for the funeral.

So Dwight doesn’t date, and she knows that. And she’d been an asshole.

“Dwight, I’m sorry.” The words fall clumsily out of her mouth.

He shrugs, but she can see the very slightest trace of hardness on his face.

“Dwight—”

“It’s fine, Jordan.”

“I can’t… go there, with Jennifer,” Jordan explains haltingly. “It wouldn’t work out.”

Dwight nods. “Definitely won’t.”

“She deserves someone she can touch.” She glares at him, forgetting to watch where she’s walking, and trips over a root hidden under the thick snow.

“It’s not everything.” He catches her by the elbow, as casual as ever, and keeps her from faceplanting into the snow.

“Her life is crazy enough,” Jordan says, trying to sound final. “She doesn’t need my madness on top of hers.”

“If you say so.”

She really considers killing him, but they’ve made it to the cabin, so she doesn’t have to.

The troubled guy is grouchy about the snow, but it’s clear that it’s mostly an inconvenience. They give him the supplies they brought and tell to reach out if he needs any assistance, but that he should stay where he is unless they come and get him.

“Hey,” He says, eager hope in his eyes. “Are they over?”

Jordan waits for a moment, and finds that the surge of rage she’d gotten so used to—her constant companion since Nathan had ruined their chance of ending the troubles—doesn’t come. 

She isn’t sure what to make of that.

Neither she nor Dwight bother with an explanation for why, but they tell him that he’ll be here for a while longer, and drop off some supplies that’ll keep him until the snow clears up.

They leave before McLaren has the chance to say too much, but by the time they’re walking away, Jordan’s vision has gone fuzzy and colorful, and there’s something moving just to the side of where she can see.

“You okay?” Dwight asks as they begin the trek back to her truck.

She nods. The more time she’s outside, the more focus she puts on listening to the rustle of snow-covered branches and the crunch of her footsteps, the clearer her vision becomes.

Dwight settles too, and they walk in silence for a while.

Jordan thinks about Jennifer and tries not to.

She thinks about her shivering at the counter every morning, both hands wrapped around a mug, and the fact that she laughs at jokes Jordan isn’t even sure she’s making, and that sometimes Jennifer says something that makes Jordan feel… normal.

No, it’s better than that. More. She makes her feel extraordinary.

Jordan chews on her tongue, and debates. Finally she says, “What should I do?”

Dwight raises an eyebrow, and she flushes, realizing that he probably hasn’t been thinking about the same thing she has. “About, uh, Jennifer.”

“Talk—”

She glares and he wisely stops and starts over. “I think she likes you. Try talking to her about it. Tell her why you’re—” He stops before he says “scared” which he must know would piss her off “—hesitating. She might surprise you.”

They’ve finally reached the car, and Dwight shrugs as he kicks snow off his boots before getting in.

The last time someone had surprised Jordan, it hadn’t been for the better, but since she and Dwight wouldn’t ever see eye to eye on the topic of Nathan Wuornos, she doesn’t mention it. Instead, she says, “I doubt it. She’s probably just there for the coffee.”

He fiddles with the cup of coffee she’d brought him from the diner. “Jennifer doesn’t like coffee.”

She can’t quite explain why her heart starts pounding.

* * *

Jennifer throws herself on the bench in Duke’s kitchen with a dramatic sigh. It’s been a couple hours since she left the Gun and Rose, but she spent the entire time pacing, her thoughts chasing themselves in circles until she’d finally decided to brave driving in the snowstorm so she could talk it through with someone.

Duke looks up from whatever he was reading with a wary look that irritates her. “Hi.”

“Don’t look at me like that,” She snaps. “I’m distraught.”

He sighs and sets his book aside. “About what?”

Jennifer only feels a slight twinge of guilt at ruining what little quiet time he had. This is important; he won’t mind.

A beat later she realizes that’s probably how Nathan and Audrey justify dragging him into trouble-solving whenever they do, a thought she ignores completely.

“It’s about Jordan,” She says.

This gets his attention, which she isn’t sure how to interpret. “You’ve been hanging out?” He asks, carefully casual.

She nods. “I’ve been exploring Haven in the mornings—” She glares at him before he can interrupt her to mention that it wasn’t safe. “Some days I just… happen to end up at the diner where she works.”

He goes from protective to skeptical faster than a channel change. “Accidentally?”

“The first time was an accident,” She says, a little too defensive. “I needed directions, so I stopped in, and there she was, so I uh, stayed, for a while.”

“And then?” He asked.

“Well, I had to order something, but I wasn’t hungry, so I got coffee—”

“You hate coffee,” Duke says, and now he’s offended. “I have offered you some really good shit, and every time, _every time_ , you say you’d rather have tea, but some shitty diner coffee—”

“DUKE. So not the point here.”

“Right. Sorry.” He neither looks nor sounds sorry, but she lets him get away with it; after all he’s the only person she can talk to about this.

“And I keep doing that. I go in there and order coffee and talk to her and…”

“And?”

“That’s it,” She says, flopping back down onto the bench.

“Might want to work on that ending,” He says, “It’s a bit of a letdown.”

She searches for something to throw at him, and then only gets more irritated when she realizes his kitchen is immaculate and there’s nothing in immediate reach.

She settles for sarcasm instead. “Oh, it’s a letdown for you? Imagine how I feel!”

Duke stands and goes to the cabinet, pulling a bottle out and pouring two drinks. He comes back to the table and sets a glass down in front of her.

“Here’s a crazy thought,” Duke says, taking a sip of his drink. “Did you try… telling her?”

“Telling her what, Duke?” She glares at him over the rim of her glass, daring him to go on.

“That you like her?”

Jennifer snorts and the whiskey burns her nose. “Really? _You’re_ going to tell me to be honest about my feelings?” She’s polite enough not to mention all the feelings she knows Duke hasn’t confessed, but not polite enough not to at least allude to them.

Duke acknowledges this by tipping his glass towards her and taking another sip.

“Anyway, today I almost touched her and she reacted like I’d swung a dead fish in her face, so it’s hopeless anyway.” She groans and takes another sip, remembering why she doesn’t like whiskey. “I know her trouble messes with her but—”

“But you don’t know how,” Duke says, and it’s not exactly a reprimand, but there’s something under his tone that stops her.

She remembers how he reacted when she’d cut herself, going pale and launching himself away from her. She’d teased him about being afraid of blood, and he’d denied it, but she thinks there’s some truth to it. Not that he’s afraid of blood, but that he’s afraid of what it does to him.

She hates to think that Jordan is afraid of touch, can’t imagine how lonely that would make a person. 

“I’m not afraid,” Jordan decides.

“You should be,” Duke says. “I’ve been on the receiving end of Jordan’s trouble, trust me.”

“She wouldn’t hurt me.”

“She wouldn’t mean to,” Duke says. “But if it was voluntary, it wouldn’t be a trouble.”

Jennifer’s had the rules of the troubles explained to her so many times it makes her want to scream, and somehow she still doesn’t feel nervous about them. Jordan’s trouble just doesn’t seem like a threat. In fact, nothing about Jordan seems like a threat.

“I don’t want her to be afraid of me,” Jennifer says.

“She’s not,” Duke says, looking away from her. He stares out one of the portholes, absently swirling his drink and watching the snow fall. “She’s afraid of herself.”

Jennifer thinks about her status the bold friend. The flyer on her cheer team, the captain of the dance team. The person who refused to let anyone tell her no, for whom “can’t” was unacceptable. The anxiety—the babbling, the twitchy nervousness—started when her trouble did, but it didn’t make her forget.

She remembers being brave.

And if Jordan is afraid, then Jennifer is going to have to be brave enough for both of them.

Without another word to Duke, Jennifer picks up her coat and leaves. She has to think. She has to plan.

She has something to say; she just needs a chance to say it.

* * *

The snow starts again in the middle of the night, so the diner is dead the next morning. Even inexperienced Havenites know it’s best to hunker in during these early snowstorms. They always blow over and the snow melts off in a few days, before winter can set in for good. Jordan only goes to work because her boss takes the time to text her that she has to, and it gives her an excuse to think ugly things about him while getting paid for doing nothing.

She puts the music on too loud and sweeps the floors even though they hardly need it. She rearranges the shelves behind the counter, creating a new organization system for the flatware, and throwing out half a dozen things they never use.

After two hours, the cook hasn’t shown up, so she’s ready to break into loud, unguarded karaoke, if only the radio DJ would cooperate and play something decent.

She thinks about locating a deck of cards—she’s pretty sure there’s one around from when Mitch hosts poker games here—and starting a game of solitaire when the bell on the door chimes.

She’s ready to be irritated until she realizes it’s Jennifer.

Jen is haloed in the light from outside, and her hair is dusted with snow like powdered sugar. For half a second, Jordan entertains a thought about how she must taste sweet, before brutally stomping it down.

She thinks about saying something, anything, but as it turns out she’s already speaking. “What are you doing here?”

It comes out harsh, hostile even, and for once Jordan doesn’t want to be that.

Jennifer falters a little. “I was, uh, around.”

“Around?” Jordan asks, looking behind Jennifer at the still-falling snow. “In this?”

Jennifer shrugs, her posture going defensive in a way Jordan hasn’t seen before. “It’s not that bad.”

A particularly sharp gust of wind shoves Jennifer forward, nearly toppling her into Jordan, who has to jump back to avoid collision.

Carefully navigating around Jennifer, Jordan pulls the door shut, noting that the storm has gotten even worse.

It makes her wonder, but she’s distracted from the thought before it can fully form.

Jennifer shakes her hair out and stomps snow off her boots, and Jordan only spares the briefest moment of grief for her freshly cleaned floors.

“Do you normally get storms like this so early?” Jennifer asks.

“No,” Jordan admits. They get snowstorms—it’s Haven; they get all kinds of storms—but typically the worst they get this time of year is mild flurries and rarely anything that sticks.

“It’s up to my knees,” Jennifer says.

“That’s not very high,” Jordan points out without thinking.

Jennifer glares. “Hey! You know—”

Jordan is already laughing—real laughter, the kind that makes her chest ache—but Jen is just getting warmed up.

Her cheeks are flushed red and she’s stepping closer, lifting her arm to jab a confrontational finger in Jordan’s face. It shouldn’t be funny. It shouldn’t be cute.

But it is. It’s objectively hilarious how much rage can fit in such a small frame, and how quickly it sparked. Jordan is laughing too hard to notice how close Jennifer is standing, how close that hand is to her face.

She’s caught, staring at bright eyes and flushed cheeks, and the fact that her face is a facsimile of anger, rather than the real thing.

And then Jennifer pokes her in the cheek.

Jordan is sure the action is accidental. She thinks that even as she’s jumping away, and even as she slips in the puddle Jen left on the floor, and even as she lands painfully on her ass.

Jennifer didn’t mean to touch her, and she was going to be in so much pain, she’s going to scream, and that’s Jordan’s fault, for not being careful, for not—

But Jennifer isn’t screaming.

In fact, she’s laughing. The finger that had been wagging in Jordan’s face, the one that had touched her, is now pointing at her, and Jen is hiding bright, almost hysterical giggles behind her other hand.

She recovers a moment later, sobering when Jordan doesn’t get up.

 _It’s like a flipped switch,_ Jordan thinks, with the small part of her brain that’s able to think at all.

“God, are you okay?” Jen asks, all anxiety. “Shit, I’m so sorry, I—” She reaches down as if to help Jordan up, and Jordan flings herself away, knocking several chairs back as she does.

“Careful!” She shouts. The first time… that was a fluke, or maybe Jordan was wrong, and Jen hadn’t touched her at all, it could have been some kind of static energy that made her _think_ she’d been touched, but she hadn’t.

Jennifer frowns. “It’s okay,” She says, carefully now. The anxiety is still there, but it’s a little softer. She crouches down, her hand barely extended.

Jordan flashes back to the time a cat had gotten stuck in the woodpile and her mom had crouched exactly like that, her hand held out the same way so she could calm the animal before freeing it.

Jordan isn’t calm, she feels wilder, too many thoughts crowded, bubbling under the surface, raging like the tangle of snow outside the window.

“Stay back,” She says, but her voice lacks force. If their situations were reversed, Jordan knows she wouldn’t listen.

“It’s okay,” Jennifer says. “You didn’t hurt me.” She smiles a little, a gentle, melting thing. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

Jordan knows no such thing, and while Jennifer might be willing to take the risk—and Jordan cannot begin to imagine _why_ she would be willing—Jordan is not.

She braces herself for the inevitable. The thing that will have to happen, because Jennifer won’t back away on her own. Jordan will have to push her back, show some ugly part of her soul that will send her running. That’s how this works, how it always worked.

She digs through her thoughts, finds something harsh, something mean that will send even Jennifer—brave, stubborn Jennifer who refused to be sidelined even when so few people took her seriously—running.

She finds something, something mean and dark, picking at a wound Jennifer keeps carefully covered, but that she’s hinted at during their morning conversations.

Before she can hiss it out and make her leave once and for all, Jen puts her hand on Jordan’s shoulder.

“Are you hurt?” She asks.

Jordan swallows, and the harsh words crumble to dust in her mouth. Helpless to do anything else, she shakes her head.

“Good,” Jennifer says quietly. Her hand moves up just a couple inches, just enough to brush through the ends of Jordan’s hair.

She doesn’t scream, but then, Jordan is pretty confident that her trouble is confined to her skin, she doesn’t think it’s in her hair. Maybe this is safe maybe…

She lets herself, just for a moment, picture them having this.

 _Is it enough?_ She wonders. But she dares to look into Jennifer’s eyes and the reply comes, fierce and cold as the wind outside.

_No._

She knows nothing will ever be enough; if she takes even a little, she’ll keep on taking, whatever she can, for as long as she can.

Suddenly she knows how Nathan felt, deciding in an instant if it would be worth it to kill someone, to destroy everything, just to save one person.

She hates that she sympathizes with his choice.

And then Jennifer touches her face, fingers cold and soft as snowfall and the world shatters.

And nothing happens.

The diner is massively silent, and dark. It takes Jordan a minute to realize that in a spectacular trick of timing, the power went out just as Jennifer was touching her.

Jennifer is still touching her.

Jennifer is still touching her, and it is still snowing, and Jordan is still in the diner, but absolutely everything is different.

“Jordan?” Jennifer asks, quiet and careful.

“Are you okay?” She asks, and her voice comes out brittle, breakable.

Jennifer nods.

Jordan leans into Jennifer’s hand, feeling her skin slowly start to warm against her cheek. “I’m not… how?”

Jennifer shrugs. “I think… I didn’t want to say anything to the others, but I think I might be immune.”

“How long?” Jordan chokes out.

Jennifer shrugs. “Started piecing it together yesterday.”

Yesterday. It’s not very long to put a theory together, and she picked a hell of a trouble to test it on.

“You could have been hurt,” She wants the words to be furious, accusing, but she can’t muster the will.

“You wouldn’t hurt me,” She says, all calm and confidence, a far cry from the nerves that had been rolling off her in waves earlier.

“I could have—” Jordan tries to insist, but Jennifer puts her finger over Jordan’s lips.

Jordan goes cross-eyed looking at it.

A sharp wind rattles the door and Jennifer shivers.

On instinct, Jordan pulls her closer, as if they have to huddle for warmth.

Although, with the power out, soon they might really need to. Jordan doesn’t really mind the idea; she hasn’t been close like that with anyone important since… a really long time. Too long, honestly.

She hopes Jennifer wouldn’t mind either, but she doesn’t want to get ahead of herself. Carefully, she disentangles herself from Jennifer and stands up, holding her hand out to help her to her feet. “You uh, want something to drink?”

Jennifer nods. “Coffee?”

Jordan bites on a smile and goes behind the counter. It’s familiar and it anchors her, keeps her from spinning away after everything.

She starts gathering some things, including a bottle of cinnamon whiskey someone left here god knew how long ago. “You know, I heard you don’t like coffee.” She says it as casually as she can, still looking at the counter as she pulled things out, and only glancing up when she thinks Jen is looking away.

She is, her eyes fixed on the whited-out window and her face flushed to her hairline.

“I do,” She says, and her voice has the same defensive tone from when Jordan had asked why she was out in the snowstorm. “Sometimes.”

Jordan laughs, something delighted and hopeful bubbling up in her. She has to kick the worn-down old stove a couple times, but it lights, and soon she has a pot of water heating up.

Thinking a quick apology to Mitch’s wife—the only person Jordan knows who drinks tea—she grabs the stash hidden behind the food processor and goes back to the now-boiling water.

Jennifer watches her, a slight smile on her face.

Jordan drops a few tea bags in and waits, breathing in the smell and trying to find her footing again.

Jennifer moves closer to the stove and turns it off. “It’s too hot,” She says. “You’ll scald it.”

“You can burn tea?” She’s trying to joke. A joke would be normal and normal would be good, but all she can think is that Jennifer is standing very close, and if Jordan wanted to, she could reach out and touch her.

And god she wants to.

She doesn’t, instead, she pours the whiskey into the tea, and then steps away from Jennifer to get a lemon out of the walk-in.

She cuts it methodically, more slowly than she needs to, still not sure how to act in skin that feels completely new.

Skin that won’t hurt Jennifer.

She squeezes a lemon into the tea and drops a couple wedges in, more for aesthetics than anything. Finally, she strains it out into two mugs and hands one to Jennifer.

“Best I could do,” She says a little sheepishly.

“Smells great.”

It’s strangely awkward, like a first date where neither of them quite knows how to start. But Jordan can’t think of this as a date; not when it’s…

Not when it’s Jennifer.

They go back out to the dining room, and Jennifer sits in her usual seat at the counter. Jordan stands across from her, unsure.

“So…” Jennifer says.

“Yeah.” Jordan takes a long sip of her tea.

“Who told you I don’t like coffee?” It’s the most innocuous of all the questions Jennifer could have asked, which catches Jordan off guard.

“Oh, uh, Dwight.”

Jen frowns. “How the hell would he know?”

Jordan laughs. “He pays attention to people,” She says.

Jennifer considers this and then shakes her head. “I bet Duke told him.”

The idea that this might be some kind of setup hits Jordan like a train, and anger follows on its heels. The idea that she might owe _Crocker_ for this…

Then again, Duke shot her, so she figures she can probably send him a fruit basket and a thank-you card and call it even.

Just like that, she’s calm again, almost laughing.

“What?” Jennifer asks, reaching across the counter to bump her hand against Jordan’s.

Unable to explain her full train of thought, Jordan jumps to a new one. “Dwight and Cr—Duke sure spend a lot of time together, don’t they?”

Jen’s answering smile is sly. “We may have to get them back for this.”

“This?” Jordan asks, hiding in her mug when she realizes that she’s trying to ask Jen exactly what _this_ is.

Jennifer shrugs. “I don’t know, nudging us together, getting us stuck in a diner during a snowstorm.”

Jordan glances outside. “I’m starting to think this might be a trouble.”

“You’re just now picking up on that? I thought you were some kind of expert?”

Flushing, Jordan takes another long sip; she’s not sure if the buzz is alcohol or happiness. “It’s Maine! Weather is weird!”

Jennifer laughs too. “How long do you think it’ll last?”

“Well, with those idiots in charge, god only knows.” There’s no heat to her words though, suddenly Jordan doesn’t even know how to find the resentment she’d gotten so used to.

Jennifer smiles and sets down her mug, reaching out and carefully taking Jordan’s hand to slowly pull the glove off, finger by finger. “What do you think we should do while we wait?”

Jordan stares Jennifer’s hand wrapped around hers. She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t pull away.

She thinks that even when the snow lets up, even when the troubles are over, she might not pull away.


End file.
